Sarah Palin was done wrong in HBO’s Game Change – by handlers

I watched an advance press copy of HBO’s Game Change this week. The book on which it is based is a great read on the 2008 presidential race. I highly recommend it. The HBO film is based on a portion of the book that centers on the John McCain team’s decision to ask Sarah Palin to be McCain’s running mate.

Palin’s people are unhappy with the show, which debuts March 10. One problem may be that the film shows things unequivocally what a reader of the book (aware of the nature of leaks that produce such a work) might not swallow as unquestionable fact. (See page 397, where the book reports, Palin couldn’t explain why North and South Korea were separate nations and did not know what the Fed did.)

There are scenes I absolutely do not believe in the film. To wit: “Game Change” depicts foreign-policy adviser Randy Scheunemann explaining to Palin that Germany was the antagonist in both World Wars. Scheunemann told the Los Angeles Times, “The idea that there was at any point that Gov. Palin expressed any uncertainty as to who were the various sides in World War I or World War II … or any other war is absolutely untrue. She was incredibly intelligent. She asked very informed questions. She was very interested and she wanted to understand John McCain’s view of foreign policy because she wanted to be the best possible vice presidential nominee.”

That said, on a personal level, HBO’s Game Change portrayed Palin in a more sympathetic light than the book. (Tim Goodman does not agree. You can read his review here.) In the movie, you see Steve Schmidt and other McCain handlers choose Palin because she is a maverick. They know she is less experienced than other candidates, but she’s a crack communicator and popular in her home state. Then they treat her like an idiot because she isn’t like all the other people they rejected.

On the road, crowds thrill to Palin, but when she gets behind closed doors, the political pros treat her with disrespect. McCain suggests inviting Palin to prepare for her one debate with Joe Biden at his home in Sedona, where she can be with her family. Her family made her better, after the hired guns, while they made her better, in some ways had made her worse.

(I’ve told the McCainiacs I always thought they should not have set up one-on-one interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. After the convention, they should have held daily 10-minute press avails after campaign events.)

By the end of the show, you are sure Palin was not up to the Oval Office — which you already knew — but you see the process that distorted her character. Kudos to Julianne Moore.

Next I’d like to see Game Change II with a focus on another subject of the Heilemann/Halperin book — the Dems’ idea of a swell running mate in 2004, John Edwards, who had his own unique story in 2008.